The economic determinants of ethnic assimilation

Ethnicity, Human Capital, Ethnic Intermarriage, J15, J24, Z13,

Ethnic Intermarriage among Immigrants : Human Capital and Assortative Mating

This paper analyzes the determinants of interethnic marriages by immigrants in the United States. The dependent variable is intermarriage across ethnic groups (on the basis of ancestry and country of birth) and the inclusion of the explanatory variables is justified by a simple rational choice economic model. A binomial logistic regression is estimated using data from the 1980 US Census, the last Census where post-migration marriages can be identified. Results show that the probability of intermarriage increases the longer a migrant resides in the U.S. and the younger the age at arrival. Both relationships can be attributable to the accumulation of US-specific human capital and an erosion of ethnic-specific human capital. Inter-ethnic marriages are more likely between individuals with similar education levels, providing evidence of positive assortative mating by education for immigrants. The construction of the availability ratio for potential spouses from one’s own group and group size using data from several Censuses provides a more accurate measure of the marriage market. Intermarriage is lower the greater the availability ratio and the larger the size of one’s own group. Linguistic distance of the immigrant’s mother tongue from English indirectly measures the effect of English language ability at arrival and is found to be a significant negative predictor of intermarriage. Those who report multiple ancestries and who were previously married are more likely to intermarry

Ethnic identity and scholastic effort: a multifaceted approach

When one analyses the influence of social identity on scholastic effort, ethnic identity largely contributes to determine it. In this paper, ethnic identity is meant as the attachment to one’s cultural heritage and the adaptation to host societies; this allows considering how conflicting demands and social pressure from parents, peers, ethnic community and host societies influence children’s effort. Attention is also paid to the locus of control; thereby, the effects of the interaction between the social context—ethnic identity—and personal traits such as the locus of control are considered. The analysis is developed through a theoretical model whose results partly show that children’s effort may be influenced positively by parents with strong attitudes towards adaptation and negatively by their peers in school who belong to marginalized groups vulnerable to discrimination and convinced that school does not improve one’s socio-economic status. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of the social context can be counterbalanced by a strong locus of control

Mexican immigration, occupational clustering, and the local labor market adjustment of African-American workers

Since the 1970s, economic restructuring and shifts in industries have morphed the occupational path of workers, curbing socioeconomic mobility for many-wages of African-American workers which have trended upward in the 1960s and 1970s started stalling beginning in the 1980s. As Hispanic/Mexican immigrants were being absorbed in various industry sectors, researchers have questioned whether unfavorable trends in African-American wages and employment outcomes are tied to Mexican immigration. This paper examines the effect of Mexican immigrants on wages for African-Americans using various estimation methods and finds consistent negative estimates, pointing to an inverse relationship between Mexican immigrants and wages for African-Americans, which is consistent with crowding out and substitution effects. However, in addition, analyses also show that a heavier source of depression of wages for African-Americans stems not just from immigration. In fact, in some ways, occupation clustering and specialization of Mexican immigrants mitigates impact of immigration on African-Americans on a whole range of low-skill occupations. But, all else equal, there appears rather to be a tendency for African-Americans to face an even greater "wage penalty" in more predominantly black occupations. The findings suggest that the interplay of immigration policy and workforce development policies and initiatives should be better understood as part of the conversation to redress factors preventing occupational and wage mobility of disadvantaged minority groups in the labor force

Age at marriage and marital instability: revisiting the Becker–Landes–Michael hypothesis

Divorce, Marital dissolution, Age at marriage, J12, J11, J10,